Another catch up post. Seriously, I cannot keep up on all the stuff we have been doing lately! OK, first things first.
Last weekend my Grandpa Art and his wife Barbara were visiting New York. We had the opportunity to spend the afternoon with them and have dinner at a great restaurant in Times Square, Carmines. We really enjoyed our time with them!!
I should point out that Miles was taking this picture. I should also point out that there are three generations of Arthur Lance in this picture!
The next day, Sunday, we spent the day in the Hamptons. We wanted to spend one last time there, we loved it so much last time. After consulting the map (i.e. Blackberry) for some last minute directions:
We were off. We did some pumpkin shopping at a roadside farmers market:
And later ate lunch at a great lobster roll place called, locally, Lunch. Cameron Diaz ate here recently. So did Alex Baldwin.
These are blowfish poppers. They are actually the tails of blowfish, deep fried. They were awesome good.
Kristal got a haircut this week that was a complete change!
Before:
After!!
We spent a lot of time working on Damion's Halloween costume this week and weekend. He wanted to be perhaps the most challenging costume you could possibly get: General Grevous from Star Wars. I actually busted out needle and thread for a portion of it:
Clowning around:
Tonight we had a big night. Damion and I went to Carnegie Hall to see Maurizio Pollini perform a solo piano concert. Just a tad bit of background on this. Pollini is one of my favorite pianists, and has been since college. The first time Kristal and I came to New York City, it was because Pollini was performing a solo piano recital on my birthday, 2001. This year was his 40th anniversary of his Carnegie Hall debut, so it was really cool that I could take Damion to the concert. Here was the program:
BEETHOVEN | Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2, "The Tempest" |
BEETHOVEN | Sonata No. 23 in F Minor "Appassionata" |
SCHUMANN | Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17 |
CHOPIN | Four Mazurkas, Op. 33 |
CHOPIN | Scherzo No. 2 |
Damion and I got all dressed up for the occasion:
We had an amazing time tonight. Pollini is inhuman. Just a brief aside about this. In any musical performance, classical piano in particular, there is a sliding scale with technical accuracy on one end, and raw emotive passion on the other side. The pinnacle of any performance is when the performer can infuse so much emotion in their performance that it pushes technical accuracy right to the edge -- it is maintained, but right on the edge. Usually, if you pull back too far, the performance doesn't have wrong notes, but also lacks some sheer passion behind the performance.
Tonight, Pollini managed to break that model. The performance was outrageously energetic and passionate, yet he maintained his true form of technical flawlessness. It was incredible. There's a reason he can sell out two back-to-back shows in Carnegie Hall's largest auditorium. There are very, very few pianists alive today of the same caliber.
While Damion and I were at Carnegie Hall, Miles and Kristal went to the Manhattan Children's Museum, and had a great time! They saw some amazing exhibits.
Miles spent 30 minutes straight working on this cubic puzzle. The goal was to put the tetris-like pieces together into a cube. Mission Accomplished!
In the Greek Mythology exhibit, this was the Trojan Horse:
This looks like ancient Greek architecture blocks to me:
Afterwards, we ate at the Brooklyn Diner, a great restaurant right across the street from Carnegie Hall.
We shared the stories of our afternoons over milkshakes and dinner. The only last picture is here because you wouldn't believe me if I asked you to imagine an $18 hot dog. But here it is!
Welp, that's it for now! Kristal and I are going BACK to Carnegie Hall tomorrow night to see George Crumb and performances of three of his pieces. Yeah, I'm a Carnegie Hall freak. :-)
5 comments:
Kristal, your hair cut looks good. I like the little curl at the end. Miles, did you lose a tooth lately? Damion, you look so handsome in that suit and did you eat all of your hot dog? Andrew, I'm glad you would able to take Damion to the show. I still remember when mom took Kristal to see 'Phamon of the Opra' love and miss you all
p.s. I know-I can't spell!
you luckies! all this carnegie hall-ing. i'm super jealous. sounds fantastic. do you think pollini's recordings convey that "raw emotion" (as much as recordings can) or is he more reserved in the studio?
do post on george crumb...he must be a pretty old dude by now. i still can't really get into his music, but i'm sure it will be quite engaging in a live setting.
Bets,
Pollini's style of playing has always been analytical and precise. That's why I have liked him so much. He is the antithesis of emotion-drenched playing, like Murrey Perahia for example. Not everybody appreciates that style, however, and Pollini has been criticized for being too dry, not creative, not daring.
I have to admit, even I have to complain about his technique at times. Pollini's recording of the Chopin Etudes, for example, demonstrate sheer mastery of the pieces. But there's no interpretation, and a pianist like Vladamir Horowitz absolutely destroys on those etudes because of the creativity with which he infuses into them.
Pollini also has been a champion of modern music, recording Legiti, Schoenberg, Nono, Webern, Boulez, etc. And his treatment of those composers are masterful.
So, to answer your question, no, his recordings do not capture what we saw last night. Last night was oddly inspiring because I had never seen Pollini in such form. I overheard someone saying that the older Pollini gets, the better he plays. :-) Last night, he was really digging into the pieces, and brought out everything the piano had. He was even humming along for quite a bit of it!
I have never seen a piano take quite the beating it did last night. Between the two Beethoven sonatas and the Schumann Fantasy, Pollini destroyed on it. And we were in for a real treat, in the encores, where he actually played the Chopin op. 12 no. 4 etude!!
Crumb must be in his 70's, so not too old. His piano works don't get much attention but are really cool. His music IS hard to get in to, especially a lot of the chamber and vocal stuff. I don't care for it. But he's always been an innovator, pushing the limits of instruments.
Speaking of which, on Nov. 11, I'm going to a piano recital of Jeremy Dent, and he's playing the Ives Sonata No. 2 (the Concord Sonata). There's a section in there where the performer has to use a 14" length of wood to play all the notes required!
Tell Kristal that her hair looks BEAUTIFUL! :)
Nice to catch up with you guys again, it'd been a little while since I had read the blog.
Kristal, your hair looks great! I love it. You guys are having such wonderful adventures. All I can say is a repeat of Bets, "you luckies!".
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